Category Archives: Biological Evolution

Against the claim that Darwin only challenged orthodox religious explanations, I pointed out that many historians and commentators on Darwin argue the contrary: namely, that Darwin’s work, Origin of the Species, faced a variety of resistance, only part of which stemmed from religious doctrine. Undeniably, Darwin challenged orthodox religious accounts of life on earth (origin and maintenance); and religious doctrine was a big factor in the thinking of most people. But more importantly to the history of biological science, Darwin’s evolutionary science also challenged prevailing theories and beliefs of secular scientists and other people who did not base their views on religion at all. The idea of fixity of life species was a far broader idea than just something gotten from religious doctrine.

“Look, if I found a watch on the beach I would obviously know that all of its parts didn’t fly together by accident. I would know that there had to have been a watchmaker.” Response: It sure looked that way….until 1859. Then came along Charles Darwin and On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Over the years that followed, scientists increasingly demonstrated that God was no longer required as an explanatory factor for all of the design in nature. Instead, life on Earth turned out to be a four billion year old story of random genetic errors followed by an automatic, blind selection of the more fit and extermi­nation of the less fit.

The Cambrian is an ancient period in geological time that lasted from 542 million years ago (mya) to 490 mya. It is the earliest time in geological history that plant and animal fossils appear in abundance. During the Cambrian a menagerie of multicell­ular life “exploded”,. . . . Creationists love the Cambrian “explosion”. To them, it proves that all the major types of animals (phyla) suddenly materialized, being instantly created by God.